Forum Moderators: open
I think if they decided to do that it wouldn't take to long just make the interal version they use available for the outsiders.
JOAT
Having said that, just because someone lacks a sense of humour doesn't mean they are going to send explosive packages through the post...I hope
and then the choice "similar spammers"
Imagine the functionality of it....
You do a search and check out the pages in the top ten and you have a number of options after each listing...
<more sites like this one>
<similar pages in the same site>
<sites that are identical to this one in every way>
:)
JOAT
Right now most of the general public doesn't know about the whois database. Many individual novice website owners, or wannabe website owners, register their domains using personal names, addresses, and phone numbers. They don't know that this info becomes publicly searchable.
With this info publicly searchable, it is only a matter of time before the wrong person uses it the wrong way. How? Can you imagine a stalker-type who is sexually interested in a womain acquaintance looking up her address in the whois database?
Don't think it can happen? How many people registered domain names during the dot-com boom - particularly high-tech types in Silicon Valley? Everyone was doing it then. How many of those people are still holding domains "just in case" they get around to building that website?
I dread reading the headline "Stalker murders woman found using Internet WHOIS database". This could happen now. Making this data even more accessible, just raises the likelihood of abuse.
The WHOIS database needs to be changed, and privacy needs to be protected now.
-egomaniac
The only modification I am suggesting is to do the entire thing.
Given the amount of spam that is currently generated from the domain database, not to mention other privacy issues, I personally would like to see all contact information removed from publically accessible records.
A personal name or company name should be the only thing available from the whois database IMHO.
I certainly don't want to see Google making it any easier than it currently is to access domain records.
That said, do you know of a more common Google search that would yield a link to the whois database in it? Searching with " inurl:mydomain.com " doesn't give it, and that is the most useful example I can think of. Searching for a person's name doesn't seem to give it either.
site:www.netsol.com inurl:anonymprox.com
Will give a result, because it is one of the over 1K that is indexed. I'm assuming that google has found these by a link somewhere else, either on the usenet or other means.
Brett's point is well taken, google is much faster than going to any registrar, but since it gets the data from links, this way would be difficult. It would need the entire database, I assume.
Coming soon! (I know of Company X doing it, I know of government agency Y doing it)
Company X will have a huge price tag on the searching.
Agency Y wants it for a huge global conspiracy and law enforcement thing.
Personally, we are up to 85% of the records, but commercial viable and all the legal things. Plus keeping it up to date! Talk about a can of worms. Not to mention you need to get all the registrars to except you or your updates will be blocked. Or they will be bound to sue you!
related, search on your sites ip address once - fun results.
After that, try "http" and view a semi stair step list order by pr...think about it.
